Priorities
by W.H. Woolhat
Summary: Remus wished he had thought to ask someone about this.  Short oneshot.  CONTAINS DEATHLY HALLOWS SPOILERS!


**Priorities**

It was three in the morning, and Remus Lupin was in the sitting room of the modest flat he and Tonks had moved into after their marriage. And in his arms was a bundle, wrapped in a blanket; the smallest, most delicate, most _frightening_ bundle he had ever held.

Theodore Remus. Ted. Teddy Lupin. It was hard to get his mind around, and yet there it was, in the form of a very real baby with a shock of ever-changing hair that was currently a bright, primary red. He was sleeping now; all that remained of his earlier fit of crying were the tracks of the tears glistening on his tiny face.

Remus wished he had thought to ask someone about this. But who could he have asked? Sure, he knew people who had raised children, most notably Molly Weasley with her brood of seven, but how long had it been since they had sat, as he was now, wide awake at 3am, staring down at the tiniest of tiny lives, worrying and wondering?

James would probably have had something helpful to say at this point. He had mellowed out a lot when Harry was born, talked a lot more about responsibility and the necessity of keeping one's family safe, but he had never talked about _how_ you were supposed to do that.

Remus didn't like people to know, but he still talked to James, sometimes; Sirius, too. Of course, Sirius wouldn't be much help in this situation. As much as he had go on—complained, really—about knowing how much better things could have been if he had been the one to raise Harry, Remus knew that he never had the capacity to understand the _worry _involved.

And there was worry, more than Remus could have possibly imagined. Before Teddy was born, back before the entire world had shifted under him, all he had been able to think about was the horror he might have inflicted on an innocent life, what he might have passed on to a child who didn't deserve the burden that he himself had carried since he was small. That thought had filled his waking hours, kept him from sleeping, forced him to behave in ways that he never would have considered under normal circumstances. He had been stupid, reckless, frightened, and utterly furious with himself.

And then suddenly, there was the baby. It was amazing how abrupt the whole thing was, the difference between wondering and knowing, the change from being consumed with self-loathing to feeling happier than he had ever felt before. The presence of Teddy in his and Tonks' life was like a warm glow, a minute sun that bathed everything in soft, peaceful light.

The thing that really got Remus, though, was how, at the heart of that sun, there was something so delicate, that needed so much attention, that was so…_dependent_. It scared the daylights out of him. How were you supposed to know what it meant when the baby cried, what he needed when he started waving his little fists in the air and wailing like the world was about to end? How could you make sure that he would be safe even when you couldn't be there, when something that shouldn't have been more important but was unavoidable came up and you had to leave such a big part of your world in someone else's care?

Every time he thought about what he had done when he first found out that Tonks was pregnant, he felt sick and ashamed. He couldn't believe that he had tried to run away from this, that he had been so selfish as to think that his problems were more important. Next to protecting his son from everything that life was going to throw at him, they were nothing.

He shifted position slightly, being very careful not to make any move that would wake Teddy, and bent down to kiss the boy on the forehead. This—this was happiness. It was good, it was right, and Remus never would have guessed that so much joy and contentment could come from something so small and so complicated. Tonks probably would have thought it obvious, but for him, for someone who so rarely had such a moment of light in his life, it was nothing short of a miracle.

And he was going to do everything he could to keep that little miracle safe. He was no longer Remus Lupin, werewolf; he was Remus Lupin, father, a daddy, and that was more important than anything he had ever been in his life.


End file.
